The Test for Alabama is the test Our System Failed in 2016

On December 12, Alabamians will decide the fate of the state's reputation, its moral legacy for the coming generation of residents. It is a fate that can be promising, or it can reinforce the depravity of the current administration, led by a man whose campaign survived this revealing confession (printed in the New York Times):

Trump: I moved on her, actually. You know, she was down on Palm Beach. I moved on her, and I failed. I’ll admit it.

Unknown: Whoa.

Trump: I did try and fuck her. She was married.

Unknown: That’s huge news.

Trump: No, no, Nancy. No, this was [unintelligible] — and I moved on her very heavily. In fact, I took her out furniture shopping.

She wanted to get some furniture. I said, “I’ll show you where they have some nice furniture.” I took her out furniture —

I moved on her like a bitch. But I couldn’t get there. And she was married. Then all of a sudden I see her, she’s now got the big phony tits and everything. She’s totally changed her look.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Trump: Yeah, that’s her. With the gold. I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.

Bush: Whatever you want.

Trump: Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.

Despite the fact that a majority of voters rejected Trump at the polls, but due to the quirks inherent in the distorting allocation of votes in the Electoral College, Trump was able to squeak by with less than three million votes than his principal opponent. These flaws in our electoral system were exploited to our great disadvantage, but there were deeper flaws being exploited in our culture as well.

In a normal process, a quote like the one above would have been disqualifying, and there is ample evidence that many people in the Republican Party believed that it was. Nevertheless, Trump continued to hold the nomination, and garnered enough votes in key areas to prevail in the Electoral College. Since taking office, the administration has been relentlessly attacking every institution, organization, and policy that protects America's most vulnerable people while promoting policies that would enrich its own donors and high officials, much like the banana republics so common in high poverty countries, where human lives are easily discarded or bartered for political power. Our national treasures and the protection of our liberties are being sold away as well.

Experts on authoritarian regimes are not surprised. These patterns are typical of the kind of behaviors that occur frequently in countries where there has been economic and social collapse. The Great Recession damaged confidence in our institutions, but it also revived fears that produce ripe opportunities for scapegoating other people, conditions ripe for tribalism, jingoistic nationalism, and xenophobia, all things that provide fertile ground for demagogues.

The divisive, outrageous behavior and rhetoric is designed to divide the population, mobilize supporters, and provide a public test of loyalty. The more depraved and morally damaging that the behavior and rhetoric become, the more degraded supporters become and the more willing they are to accept more outrages. Standing by their peers, and being loyal to one another, can easily take precedent over all other considerations, including basic standards of decency.

For those of us who have not been compromised by an overwhelming sense of loyalty to peers, we need to consider what matters more, our humanity or our loyalty? Where do we draw the line? At what point do we say enough?

Ending Net Neutrality is Theft - Control is Ownership

The Internet is one of the most important inventions in American history. It is our national treasure, a great highway of information available to anyone who connects, available to all in public libraries. What is the value of the Internet? How is it possible for the control of all that value to be transferred to a very few hands? Just give it to them to control. Make no mistake, this is a giant heist of massive proportions. Our entire economy is now dependent on the Internet. That is what is at stake in this moment.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is considering reversing the principle of open, equal access to information in the United States. Reversing this rule would allow large Internet providers to determine which websites and services are available at what speeds to Americans.

The potential for private corporate interests to decide what Americans have access to see, to witness, to communicate is a huge threat. It is also a power grab of astonishing proportions. Control of information, information created by other people, is a form of theft and should not be tolerated by a free people. This arbitrary exercise of raw power must be resisted.

Write to the FCC to tell them that you want the freedom to see everything, without those choices being mediated by corporate gatekeepers.

Fight for your future America!

"We really cannot live without truth. We need truth not only in order to understand how to live well, but in order to know how to survive at all."

Other writers, like Bruce Bartlett, are pleading with their fellow citizens, to pay attention to facts, to the specifics of our current affairs. In his new book, The Truth Matters, Bartlett explains,

"One problem every reader has these days is figuring out who to trust as an analyst or news source. It sometimes seems as if everyone is compromised, saying what is in their own economic interest or whatever suits their partisan point of view at that particular moment. Cable television is very much at fault here because it pretends that there are only two points of view on any given subject, and it seldom subjects its talking heads to much in the way of vetting."

Part of knowing the truth is knowing how reliable a source of information is. We count on people who are experts on the weather to tell us when we should expect extreme weather, rain, excessive heat, floods. There is a practical necessity to knowing who to trust. This connection seems to have been lost in politics. It has become fashionable to doubt reliable people, to ignore people who do their best to be accurate reporters of information, of data.

Information is less expensive than ever before to obtain in vast quantities. In some ways that is unfortunate, because it may have devalued the quality of information. It's too easy. And the cost of dismissing high-quality information and replacing it with dubious information may not be realized for years, when the opinions and attitudes formed from those mistakes come to fruition, when it is too late.

Older Americans know more about the costs of accepting lies, about wars that were not winnable, about drugs that caused birth defects, about pollution that made people sick, about tobacco and lung cancer. Younger Americans see a constant stream of contradictions, including refutations of the truth we knew about the lies we were told in the past. In the midst of these disputes about what is real, we are now in a social revolution with regard to sexual abuse, with bizarre claims being made about justifications, accusations, and behaviors that should not be entertained or tolerated.

Unfortunately, being able to express the truth is also a matter of social, economic, and political power. It is something we need to protect, for everyone. If we do not make an effort to protect the truth, and those who tell it, our civilization might not survive.

The president of Puerto Rico seems incoherent, irrational, and emotionally unstable. He also doesn't know who that is. Yes, we are in the most dire leadership circumstances in our nation's history.

We are being led by a man personally advised by well-known white supremacists. There is no pretense to be had about this. Plausible deniability has turned into willful ignorance. Despite these readily apparent issues, which are eloquently written and discussed among rational people, there is far less discussion about what to do about it. Appeals tend to rely on pleas to the cabinet to act using the 25th Amendment, or calls for impeachment by the president's own party. These are unlikely avenues for repairing the damage being done. Instead, Americans need to look to themselves. They need to be educated and trained to defend themselves against dictatorial leaders. Institutions and legal structures are not enough.

The norms that keep us safe are not matters that can be left to politicians. Even as we deal with gun violence and threats of war, our safety depends on more than formal agreements and Constitutional declarations. What keeps us safe and what puts us in danger, are mirror images of a society that understands what is good, what is honorable, decent, and fair. When we stray from those norms, we invite trouble. No claim to a right can withstand a culture where a privileged few can run amok without restraint. We need to understand that, make it part of our identity in the same way that we often claim membership in our religions. The civic virtues cannot be ignored or allowed to deteriorate.

Those virtues require us to think, to understand the dangers of rash decisions, of emotions, of impulses that would lead to even more trouble if they are unleashed. We need maturity, character, and reflection in our leaders. We need to understand the problems with self-interest, with a lack of understanding about the common good, communities, and practices that allow us to live our lives the best way we can, with the support of friends and neighbors.

To that end, we need to educate a new generation of leaders, of followers committed to selecting leaders worthy of being followed. Awareness of our history, an honest perspective on our culture, the values that we hold dear, and the circumstances of our people are necessary for the formation of such a citizenry. This means that we must put the bar higher, work harder, and lift our aspirations for our country in ways that we seem to have forgotten. One of those things is that our country works best when we recognize that we are all Americans and deserve to be treated as fellow Americans, even in Puerto Rico.

These books provide a glimpse of what such a citizenry might be like and the things we need to fix:

The compassion of everyday Americans is limitless, but we are being attacked. From the dismissal of the suffering of the people in Houston, to the elimination of protections for children who know no other country, this administration is attacking the foundations of our society. We cannot allow ourselves to be deluded by appearances or rhetoric. We are in danger.

We need to help those in need and support the people who are doing good work. Many private companies are pitching in to help Houston. Others are standing up to discrimination. We need to seek them out and support them. Some people hesitate to give to nonprofits they do not know or have trouble trusting those that they do. Use charitynavigator.org to learn about them.

Our little bit here is to provide some symbolic supplies, to make people think about these humanitarian disasters.

The tragedy in Charlottesville was the predictable result of our president encouraging the radical right, a band of white males whose sense of entitlement and racist attitudes and hatred of other people has been nurtured by a poisonous political party intent on wielding total control. There is no excuse for what happened in Charlottesville, a crime committed by Nazis and white supremacists. There is also no excuse for creating circumstances in which white supremacists and Nazis feel comfortable enough to march into an American city and threaten people. These same racists were instrumental in assisting the rise of a leaders who is trying to strip our daughters of healthcare, of access to educational opportunities, and other benefit that have resulted from decades of struggle. Allowing them to be subverted by these perverts needs to stop. Making that happen may mean that we need to step up, to make an effort to resist at times and places where people have turned a blind eye to these events. We may need to make influential people uncomfortable.

Polite People Gassed Millions of other People

We need to understand who we are dealing with. According to Vanity Fair, Stephen Millerdescribed himself this way: “I will say and I will do things that no one else in their right mind would do,” he admitted in a 2002 speech to his Santa Monica High School classmates. In the same speech, to a chorus of boos, he said, “Am I the only one who is sick and tired of being told to pick up my trash when we have plenty of janitors who are paid to do it for us?”

This is a man who was mentored by Richard Spencer at Duke University, and has worked for Michele Bachmann, Jeff Sessions, and now Steve Bannon and Donald J. Trump. It no accident that the most virulent, most malignant policies have emanated from his vicinity. These are the men who believe that they should determine the policies for our daughters, who think that they own the world and should decide how our daughters will live.

These men are led by a man who bragged about sexually assaulting women, yet his favor is sought by every Republican candidate. These are people who frequent country clubs, attend galas for charities, and sponsor internships for young people. These are the same people who need to be uncomfortable with the way things are going. The challenge for all of us is to figure out how to apply the appropriate social and political sanctions on people who feel compelled to do the same to our daughters, when they are not supporting those who would run them down with a car.

Self-Censorship: Timidity is the Danger

While extremists are taking over, our institutional structures appear unable to prevent the destruction of decades of work to provide social, economic, and environmental protection for Americans. The can only happen if we are silent, if we don't complain, we go along, and hope for the best.

That's not likely to happen. The pressure to conform, the pressure to appear one of the crowd, and to be socially appealing makes the problem worse. Like high schools students wanting to fit in, adults who should know better are sitting silent, pretending that what they see is normal. That has to stop.

While it's true that we need people who can see beyond their own tribal commitments, who can weigh options, and think through the consequences of political choices, we also need people who are willing and able to challenge a system of selection that limits choices in such a way that potential solutions are taken off the table. That means challenging other people to think, to consider alternatives, to take a look at more than one source of information, and to question information, but not merely to dismiss it, but to determine what the truth really is. That takes effort, it takes courage.

We need to set an example for our children, our grandchildren, and the people who depend on us for their well-being. We need to rock the boat. Get in the way.

Robert Mueller is a real investigator with a solid reputation and a track record to match. We should all be encouraged by his appearance at this stage. But investigations will not solve the problems unless we have other officials who are willing to act.

At this point, there is little doubt that the administration is incompetent, misinformed, uneducated, and misdirected by self-interests, business opportunities, and other self-serving distractions. Responsible men and women have to be vigilant and careful to do what they can to curtail the mendacity bearing down on America, vigilant to spot the damage being done, and careful to avoid being targeted by operatives out to destroy the protections that Americans have enjoyed for decades. We need to protect ourselves from the kleptocracy and the plutocrats who are intent on eliminating our ability to keep our environment clean, our workforce productive, and our children well-educated and healthy. These are not trifling matters. They are essential to a way of life that we need to defend and improve.

To defend ourselves, we need good public servants, like Robert Mueller, and we need to exercise the powers that we have inherent in our own citizenship. We must become good stewards of our country's ideals and promises. For that, we need to remind ourselves of what those ideals are, what promises we have made to one another, and what kind of country we want our children to inherit. The models of Russia and Turkey are not what we should aspire to become. We are better than that, and we deserve better than that.

We need to articulate that vision for the election in 2018, so that the people we choose to lead us forward understand it and will pursue it.

When we look at the struggles people have had to make America what it is, we have to remind ourselves of the sacrifices and dedication it took for us to enjoy the benefits of their labors. Our generation must draw inspiration from that to keep us on the right path, so that we do not repeat the mistakes of the past.

With the second attempt to attack American healthcare well under way, we need to focus on the immediate threat, while looking at the next chance we have to prevent disaster and reverse this appalling administration.

Congressional leaders are resorting to the most ridiculous lies to promote their interests. Under this administration, there seems to be no shame in the most openly corrupt policies, regardless of the damage that they can do to the population. Again, this pattern of bad behavior is not a theoretical mystery. It is a consistent feature of small coalition politics, where those holding power do with very few insiders and hold power by the thinnest of margins. In the long run, these narrow interests sap economic prosperity by keeping profits high and wages low. It is a recipe for economic decline. Still, the game is not over. We can win against the oligarchs. Read about how to fight it below:

This past weekend scientists and their supporters marched in Washington and in cities around America and around the world. Many carried signs that read about how incredulous they were that they felt that they needed to demonstrate in support of science, facts, and evidence-based policies. The current administration is rolling back protections for individuals at an alarming rate, exposing many of the most vulnerable portions of the population to increased environmental, economic, and health risks. These efforts are often led by people who are actively spreading false information and discredited theories.

While there are conspiracy theorists who still believe that we did not land on the moon, they and people like them have rarely been taken seriously. That has changed.

People with no experience in research of any kind have attacked professions who have honed their skills in designing experiments, gathering data, verifying information, and subjecting evidence to rigorous testing and analysis. People holding political power have joined them to serve people and organizations who have an economic interest in distorting research, misrepresenting facts and hiding information that might injure those same interests. This is not a new phenomenon. It was already a well-developed machine.

Large corporations and wealthy individuals have been involved in promoting their ideological and economic interests for decades. Tobacco and chemical industries have fought research that challenged their interest. Several of the books below recount those efforts, some in great detail.

Bold Actions Are Not Proposals

More than a dozen journalists praised the Trump administration for its attack on Syria, one that did almost nothing to the capability of the Syrian military to continue to attack civilians. The same Congressmen who opposed President Obama's request to use force, praised Trump's attack, while Trump's own very well documented history of opposing involvement in Syria is mysteriously ignored. If logic fails, it is because the whole story is incoherent. Critics make strong arguments to the attack being an impulsive reaction to a challenge to his masculinity, a smokescreen to divert attention from allegations of Russian interference in the election, or an attempt to garner favor among male voters. Whatever the motivation, it cannot be explained in terms of a coherent policy toward the Syrian government. Legal arguments aside, the order appears to be a matter of pure fiat.

Understand coherence

A coherent policy would have several defining characteristics. First, it would have a policy goal. At the moment, no such goal has been articulated. The use of chemical weapons may be a trigger, but no such declaration preceded the attack and the Secretary of State had just declared that the Syrian people would have to deal with the situation there, giving a green light to their oppressor to make that outcome more to Assad's liking. Second, there would be clear expectations for our allies and opponents in the Middle East and elsewhere. Publicly abusing our NATO allies with claims of unjust burdens and celebrating Brexit and denigrating the European Union does not inspire confidence in our allies and trading partners, while it encourages our opponents. Finally, the resources for implementing such policies would include staffing, planning, and international coordination for implementation. The lack of understanding about the basics of running a government is being revealed.

Clarity, especially in dangerous situations, is the best way to avoid unintended reactions. Having a policy that people understand, both Americans and foreign leaders, will do much to ensure our security. That is the responsibility of a leader. It is also an antidote to 'mission creep,' mistakes, misunderstanding and miscalculation.

Demand coherence

Whatever the opposition does, one thing will be critical: there must be an articulate explanation of the alternative. Proposals need to be specific and attainable. Support has to be built at the base and the opposition needs to hold itself accountable for maintaining the discipline and focus necessary to implement clear policies, whether in Syria, North Korea, or in trade. We cannot afford an inarticulate, haphazard approach to foreign or domestic policy.

Beware of Incoherence

We have to teach ourselves to see through blather and incoherence and demand clarity and evidence in new ways. Our future and that of our children depends on securing better leadership, with a clear, inclusive vision for all of us. To have coherent policies, we have to find coherent leaders who can articulate policies that are more detailed than slogans or sound bites. Clarity is a matter of accountability and responsibility. Incoherence is a serious problem for a leader and more serious for the people he leads. Character matters. Reputation matters.

When leaders mumble, when they don't articulate a clear vision, when they obfuscate, are evasive and incoherent, they are not being good leaders. The tools of obfuscation include incoherence. Avoiding responsibility is a habit that makes problems worse and the future more uncertain. This is what we are facing now.

Our military is trained to assess their opponents and to consider the risks of engagement. We hope that their advice is heeded and weighed against the cost to Americans and our allies. In dictatorships, the interest of the public and the costs of military failures is borne by people who are treated as expendable and casualty rates reflect that indifference. A coherent policy will recognize these costs and benefits.

For additional information on how bad foreign policies are common to small coalitions like the one we have in place, read these books:

Freedom of Speech - Our Inherent & Inherited Vulnerability

We've had a social media Pearl Harbor and we're still floating in the harbor, waiting for another wave of troll kamikaze drone-bots to spread disinformation. America's greatest weakness is our collective inability to identify the truth and smell bullshit and our freedom to spread it among ourselves. We should know better, but we don't. Why is that?

We don't know better because many of us were never taught to think critically about what we read or to go beyond our social and political borders to see different perspectives. That skill, and it is a skill, requires a number of emotional, intellectual, and social virtues that we do not normally associate with national defense or protecting our country, but may be the most important skills we can develop, those of the citizen. It would help if we could see examples.

Identify and Neutralize the Enemy

We may not be able to destroy the enemy, the Russian attackers who have infiltrated our social media, but we can identify them. Some clues are obvious, an new account with 250,000 followers is one, but there are many more subtle indicators that the account may be a bot and not a real person, or a highly intelligent enemy combatant. We cannot go into the fray unarmed or we will hurt. But first, we need to know who they are. We can't get bogged down in verifying the truth of this or that quote or this or that story. Snopes, Politifact, and the Washington Post, among others, have tried to be fact-checkers, but the sheer volume of disinformation is overwhelming. We can't stop it, but we can identify it, and try not to step in it. While that may not be a complete answer, it might allow other decision makers in the social media industry to change policies about access to the huge megaphones they have provided to people who spread disinformation.

To that end, we are proposing a GoFundMe campaign to develop a public access database of suspicious accounts on Facebook and Twitter. A great start on this has already been made with regard to news sources, but the "repeaters" and tweeters in Facebook and Twitter need to be identified as well.

Assuming that we can get sufficient funding for Phase I by May, we anticipate a 6-month roll-out for Phase I, with Phase II comingsomewhere near January 2018 to go live with Phase II, prior to the mid-term election.

In the meantime, we recommend the following books for people to read about propaganda and the Russian threat to democracy:

Ruling Coalitions: Large and Small

Americans like to believe that they live in a land of equality, justice, and freedom. Those are nice ideals, but they are very far from reality. There is a very large discrepancy between perception and reality when it comes to economics. Much of this discrepancy is the result of invisible differences in wealth, the holding of assets that are not tangible in the common sense. Holdings of stocks, bonds, financial assets of various kinds are not readily apparent in daily life. The accumulation of those assets may be completely invisible to most people, many of whom are unaware that such things even exist. Asset bubbles and sophisticated credit default swaps are part of a world few citizens venture into or have expertise. Yet those who inhabit the organizations and institutions where those financial transactions occur make decisions that have profound consequences for the rest of society, as we saw vividly in 2008. Many were hurt, but a few were not. That is not an accidental difference.

Small groups of people have personal access to the central decision-makers in our society. In general, when there are very small coalitions of people ruling, they tend to be part of highly extractive institutions, where a few people benefit at the expense or through the use of many other people. Examples include mining, oil and gas, and in the past through slavery and plantation operations. These patters are well documented in The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics and Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. There is little doubt that, in the broad course of human history, larger ruling coalitions, representing larger groups of people, produce better opportunities and more prosperous societies.

Whenever the size of the ruling coalition shrinks, fewer people are well off. When it shrinks to the size of one family, as it does in most autocracies, even more people suffer, as they do in North Korea and in many of the dictatorships we have witnessed in Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. That is a truth that needs to be reckoned with in our own political future. For more information, here are some great resources, see below:

What is more disturbing than the misanthorpic priorities are the justifications for them. Logic defying relationships between means and ends, the dismissal of humanity, the naked greed and the blatant deceptions involved in making the case for this or that policy have rendered the administration immune from critical examination. These are not serious people. They are dangerous people.

By rendering policy into absurdity, by making up bullshit that goes far beyond lies, they have created the kind of reality-show suspension of disbelief in which atrocities can be tolerated, ignored, or denied with relative impunity. It is clear that, up to this point, there are no adults in the competing institutions with sufficient moral fortitude to challenge the emerging status quo. Normalizing the administration is harmful to society. This is not normal. There should be more holding our government together than bullshit.

For students of Russian history, there is nothing new or surprising about the Kremlin's penchant for using propaganda as a weapon against the West. In the past, there have been planted stories with little credibility in publications of dubious reputation with limited circulation. With the Internet, that mode of production has radically changed in breadth and efficiency. The scope of operations and the size of the battle space has increased exponentially. So too, has the ability of an inside 5th column to disrupt and stab us in the back.

This morning, NPR presented the work of researchers who were able to piece together Breitbart's position in spreading false and misleading stories during the last presidential campaign. That research shows the connections that Breitbart used to spread its poisonous stream of propaganda. Americans, it seems, were ripe targets for this kind of operation, having weakened the educational system that used to prepare citizens by having them think critically about information, the sources, and the evidence.

Our culture is under attack, but not by other people's babies, Islam, or communists. It is under siege by people who refuse to adhere to standards of truth-telling, accountability, or basic logic. We have seen our elected officials make racist statements, unsupported allegations against former officials, and propose legislation that fact-checking blows to pieces. Yet a sufficient number of people continue to bow to these assaults to allow the people who commit these offenses to remain in office and in control of our institutions while they attempt to dismantle the means by which accountability operates. We need to understand this process better and teach our children how to combat the cancer of dezinformatsiya that has been unleashed on our society.

America is being tested by an administration whose relationship with words is completely utilitarian. Words work or they don't. They have no intrinsic meaning or relationship to any notion of 'the truth.' This behavior is radically at odds with the standards of understanding that decent people generally use. The administration's relationship with the truth is nonexistent. We are faced with the challenge of a political system that does not respect the truth enough to deal with lying, even when it is done in a fashion that violates the laws concerning perjury. The scale of the problem beyond any we have experienced in American history.

It's sometimes said that the first casualty of war is the truth. Part of that assertion is about maintaining the loyalty of combatants. Propaganda and harangues are the norm in war. In civil society, we should not be at war. The breakdown of civil society would be of great benefit to our enemies. Strong ethics and a strong commitment to the truth is the armor we should tend to first, before war becomes the last resort. The books below explain why the truth should be our first priority in meeting the challenges we face today.

Repeated pleas to accommodate atrocious policies that embody hatred and fear will accompany a milder, reasonable sounding tone. It is critical that we not forget that the policies themselves have not changed. The administration is still intent on focusing on voter suppression and my have a large domestic police force to send into polling places in future elections. The employment of a vast army of immigration police can easily be assigned to "monitor" the voting booths in places where the administration claims that there might be "voter fraud." These issues need to be mentioned in light of the actions and expressed intentions of the ruling party. It would be true to the character of the people involved.

Questions should be asked in open town hall meetings, to put lawmakers on notice that we are watching. Control of the political agenda is still up for grabs. That agenda can be defined in part by the questions that are being asked. That is why is is so important not to self-censor, to resist fear and intimidation.

Avoiding self-censorship includes making an issue out of showing papers on internal flights, on harassment by immigration officials that serve no purpose. Records of travelers can be inspected through the airlines. There is no reason to interview the son of Muhammad Ali any more than a middle-aged French history professor. These outrages should not be tolerated and there should be accountability for officials who do these things. Names, titles, and other identification should be made so that they are not as willing to conduct illegal searches and detentions.

Challenging these kinds of abuses requires that we organize to be effective in addressing the practices that are emerging. The ACLU and other well-established organizations need your support. We have to provide the resources for professionals to engage in resisting actions that are clearly designed to create fear and intimidation. We need to remember the struggles that provided the freedoms we have enjoyed and the way those freedoms were secured. The struggle may never stop. #Resist

Expect more claims of success from the Trump administration, but don't be fooled.

Business Insider reports that between 50% and 70% of all farm workers are undocumented immigrants. They pick the tomatoes, the fruits and vegetables that appear in the produce sections of the local supermarkets around the country. Produce isn't the only area that will be hit by the administration policies. The Texas Tribune cites Census data showing that:

"..in 2015 Mexico imported more than $92 billion worth of goods from Texas, while Texas imported more $84 billion worth of goods from Mexico."

These are not insignificant impacts. And they are all negative.

The impact of devastating policies implemented by authoritarian leaders is nothing new. Joseph Stalin implemented the 'fake science' developed by Trofin Lysenko to employ in Soviet era agriculture in the U.S.S.R., while instituting collectivization. The result? Estimates vary, but somewhere between 10 and 30 million people perished in the process, while Stalin also attacked those who clung to the truth and resisted. He famously said that he was "Dizzy with Success," when his bureaucrats cooked the numbers to lie about the results.

We can expect the same with Trump. As Bloomberg notes, he is already taking aim at economic statistics to produce 'alternate facts.' We must resist and support those who do.

It is no accident that women played an important role in the resistance to Stalin's policies. In most cases where practical issues are at play, women are usually the first to experience the problems and the first to take action.

From Wikipedia:

"Women's role in resistance

Women were the primary vehicle for rumors that touched upon issues of family and everyday life.[23] Fears that collectivization would result in the socialization of children, the export of women’s hair, communal wife-sharing, and the notorious common blanket affected many women, causing them to revolt. For example, when it was announced that a collective farm in Crimea would become a commune and that the children would be socialized, women killed their soon-to-be socialized livestock, which spared the children. Stories that the Communists believed short hair gave women a more urban and industrial look insulted peasant women.[24] After local activists in a village in North Caucasus actually confiscated all blankets, more fear dispersed among villagers. The common blanket meant that all men and women would sleep on a seven-hundred meter long bed under a seven-hundred-meter long blanket.[25] Historians argue that women took advantage of these rumors without actually believing them so they could attack the collective farm “under the guise of irrational, nonpolitical protest.”[26] Women were less vulnerable to retaliation than peasant men, and therefore able to get away with a lot more.[27]

Peasant women were rarely held accountable for their actions because of the officials’ perceptions of their protests. They “physically blocked the entrances to huts of peasants scheduled to be exiled as kulaks, forcibly took back socialized seed and livestock, and led assaults on officials.” Officials ran away and hid to let the riots run their course. When women came to trial, they were given less harsh punishments as the men because women, to officials, were seen as illiterate and the most backward part of the peasantry. One particular case of this was a riot in a Russian village of Belovka where protestors were beating members of the local soviet and setting fire to their homes. The men were held exclusively responsible as the main culprits. Women were given sentences to serve as a warning, not as a punishment. Because of how they were perceived, women were able to play an essential role in the resistance to collectivization."

Read more about the techniques Stalin used to gain and maintain control, and how people resisted in Stalin: Order through Terror (see below).

Over 50 years ago two political scientists noticed something profound about the policy agendas in America, the things that are missing (along with those issues are the people who have them). Since then, that observation had become pedestrian. We talk about people who are forgotten, who don't make the news, and who don't get any attention from politicians. Often, they are marginalized populations with little power.

Some pundits argued that the people who have been forgotten are the white, lower-to-middle income people who were left behind in the economic expansion. Globalization is not the first instance of economic changes leaving people behind. They are often invisible to the wider society, languishing in their misery in private, without opportunities or choices. It's worth know about those struggles, which have re-emerged in our last election. Resistance is sometimes subtle, sometimes not.